As Iraq Violence Grows, U.S. Sends More Intelligence Officers

[Purveyor]

(Reuters) - The United States is quietly expanding the number of intelligence officers in Iraq and holding urgent meetings in Washington and Baghdad to find ways to counter growing violence by Islamic militants, U.S. government sources said.

A high-level Pentagon team is now in Iraq to assess possible assistance for Iraqi forces in their fight against radical jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a group reconstituted from an earlier incarnation of al Qaeda, said two current government officials and one former U.S. official familiar with the matter.

The powerful ISIL, which seeks to impose strict sharia law in the Sunni majority populated regions of Iraq, now boasts territorial influence stretching from Iraq's western Anbar province to northern Syria, operating in some areas close to Baghdad, say U.S. officials.

Senior U.S. policy officials, known as the "Deputies Committee," met in Washington this week to discuss possible responses to the deteriorating security outlook in Iraq, said a government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/25/us-usa-iraq-security-idUSBREA3O1YZ20140425

[shraby]

1. Why don't they just send Bush and Cheney over there? They broke it

now they can fix it.

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. It's a strange, strange world.

We overthrow Iraq's secular Sunni dictator with an illegal invasion based on lies, unleashing a decade of war that has left hundreds of thousands dead.

He is then replaced by a Shiite leader closely aligned with our big enemy, Iran, and who is in a de facto alliance with the secular Alawaite dictator Assad in Syia, whom we are currently trying to overthrow.

And now we are sending intelligence officers to help the guy who is the ally of our enemy fend off the Sunni Islamic crazies who are also attacking Assad in Syria.

Meanwhile, we are sending anti-tank missiles to the "good" rebels in Syria.

Who in God's name is running our foreign policy?